Siddiqi Ray is a Minneapolis-based photographer well known for her technical mastery and casual, witty and effortless manner. Over the years, a roll call of international subjects have found themselves in front of Siddiqi’s lens – including Nelson Mandella, the Dalai Lama, the Buddhist nuns of Tibet and the Navy SEALS. With her universal rapport and ability to establish a meaningful, authentic personal connection, she puts her photographic subject immediately at once.
Trained in film and at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Siddiqi counts among her clients the Associated Press, Chipotle, and the Mayo Clinic – where she currently serves as an embedded photographer with the Emergency Department. Her portraits have graced the pages if Time Magazine, the Utne Reader, USA Today, Allure Magazine and many other national periodicals. As one journalist wrote, “You wish you were the person in the photograph.”
As a well-established educator, Siddiqi has taught and inspired at Mayo Clinic’s Cancer Center, the Minneapolis College or Art and Design and the Zen Center of Minneapolis. She is past president of the American Society of Media Photographers and sits on the board of Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
Not only a sought-after speaker on the technical aspects of photography, Siddiqi is also a well-known motivational speaker. She shares with her audience her personal struggles with addiction and learning disabilities and the power of the camera as a source of healing through self-expression.
Since 1985 Siddiqi Ray has been bringing out the best in her clients through her powerful, thoughtful and iconic images. Hungry to translate her meaningful client interactions into greatness in herself and others, she has risen to become a well-known motivational speaker.
Siddiqi delivers an important message of hope – meeting struggles head on, making difficult choices, overcoming failure and saying “yes” to every opportunity in life.
Born in upstate New York, Siddiqi has personally experienced depression, eating disorders, drug addiction, learning disabilities, homelessness and living in a psych ward. Throughout her personal struggles, the constant has been her camera. “I use the camera first for myself,” she says of the healing power of creative self-expression. “Then I humbly say “yes” to life, and my creativity always pulls me through.”
Through her ability to connect with every human being, whether in front of her lens or in front of a podium, Siddiqi delivers a message of hope, spirituality, humility and grace to every human being who has the potential to say “yes”.
Drawing on her experience of world travel and her own personal journey, Siddiqi will make you laugh and cray. She’ll make you think. She will inspire you to be yourself.
